


Galaxies

by biggrstaffbunch, khakis



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-13
Updated: 2013-11-13
Packaged: 2018-01-01 09:19:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1043122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggrstaffbunch/pseuds/biggrstaffbunch, https://archiveofourown.org/users/khakis/pseuds/khakis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Bro,” Zayn asks, “Have you just--have you drawn a heart on me?”</p><p>Liam grins. “Yep,” he says proudly. “Those are the--whatsitcalled--the ventricles.” He flicks his fringe from his eyes. “Learned that from a cartoon once.”</p><p>“Mate,” Zayn says, “I thought it was a tree. And those were the roots.”</p><p>Zayn’s the artist of the group but Liam likes to draw, too. On Zayn, anyway. Three inked-on expressions of Liam’s feelings over the course of the past three years, and one time Zayn drew on Liam instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Galaxies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackwayfarers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackwayfarers/gifts).



> This is a joint effort of supreme love for Alex on the occasion of his birthday. We hope you know how much we adore you. And we also hope you enjoy this piece of best friend buffoonery and cuddles.

|

The scritch-scratch of a Sharpie is what first awakens Zayn from his nap. Feeling the tip moving in fits and bursts, he opens his eyes to see Liam peering over the bare skin of his arm, tongue poked between teeth in concentration.

They’re huddled in the back of a rented SUV. It’s January and it’s cold enough that their breath mists like smoke between them, but they’re on the way to airport so they can fly to _Los Angeles_ to record their _first album_ , which means instead of hibernating with Zayn, Liam is awake and excited and on the verge of ruining the sleeve of Zayn’s brand new henley.

“Bro,” Zayn asks, “Have you just--have you drawn a _heart_ on me?”

Liam grins. “Yep,” he says proudly. “Those are the--whatsitcalled--the ventricles.” He flicks his fringe from his eyes. “Learned that from a cartoon once.”

“Mate,” Zayn says, “I thought it was a tree. And those were the roots.”

Liam looks offended. “Trees don’t have ribcages, though,” he says. His lower lip extends, almost but not quite a pout.

“Yeah, but hearts don’t have leaves either.” Zayn twists his forearm to better see the picture drawn into his skin. Beside him, Liam scrubs ineffectually at his ink-stained fingertips, suddenly quiet.

There’s a twinge of worry in Zayn’s chest at that. Because sometimes Liam, for all his confidence, still freezes up when they take the mick. Like he’s not sure if they’re being serious or not, like he’s not sure if he should laugh or is being laughed at.

Zayn wishes he knew how to take that uncertainty away. He’s tried to pour it into song, sharing a weatherbeaten iPod and an earbud, saying _good morning_ with an old Jay Sean track Liam’s never heard before, asking _can you believe this_ with that sick remix from some DJ up north. Confiding _I’m so glad we’re in this together_ with Monster playing in a loop while they run each other through breath exercises on the way to their first post-show public appearance.

Maybe this is just one more way to communicate with Liam. To show him what they’ve been telling him all along.

“My aunt, she draws too, yeah? And she always says it doesn’t matter what comes out at the end of a drawing anyway,” Zayn says. He yawns, touches one of the smeary lines. “Like, no one cares if it’s a heart or a tree, do they? What they care about is how they feel, what they’re reminded of.”

Liam doesn’t look up from his fingertips, but beneath the fan of his lashes, Zayn can see the corners of his lips tilt up. He knocks his knee against Liam’s, feeling the heat of his skin bleed through denim.

“Like for me, trees mean like, growth. Branches reaching towards the sky. Reminds me of singing onstage, and getting better. Being better. Doing something I love.”

Liam’s knee presses harder against Zayn’s. His knuckles brush the back of Zayn’s hand.

“And, um. The heart,” Zayn picks up speed, lets his thoughts spin out. “The heart is like, the most important organ. A part that people need, that people can’t live without. Gives you blood and breath. Helps you run. Yeah?”

Zayn lets his body sink into Liam’s, an uninterrupted line of warmth from shoulder to hip to knee to foot. “Yeah?” he asks again, needing to hear Liam say it. Needing to know Liam understands.

Liam clears his throat. “Yeah,” he allows, voice low. It cracks a bit at the end, and a violent blush sweeps his neck and the tops of his cheeks.

Zayn smiles then, lets it unfurl. A quiet smile, like the sun beaming in through a closed shade, something muted so the full intensity doesn’t blind.

“So. Reminds me of you, donut head.” he says quietly. “I look at this, and no matter what it’s supposed to be, it’s. You.” He nudges Liam’s foot, coaxing. “That’s what makes it nice. To me, anyway.”

Liam turns to look at Zayn fully, eyebrows drawn together. It makes the back of Zayn’s neck itch, how Liam’s face is so open and sincere and easily read. Makes him want to be just as honest. Just as guileless.

After a moment, Liam’s brow clears, and he nods.

“I think you’re nice too, Zayn.” he says, and there’s a simple gravity in his tone that makes Zayn’s belly bottom out unexpectedly.

Laughing to cover up the winded quality of his voice, Zayn grabs Liam’s hand, laces their fingers together and brings it to his lips, a graze of his mouth against Liam’s knuckles. “Then cheer up, grumpy guts,” he says, giving Liam’s hand a manful squeeze that turns into a mini arm-wrestling match. “Or next time I’ll let Louis draw on me instead.”

Liam pushes at Zayn’s chest, toppling him over. “Never say you would!” he exclaims sotto voice, faux-shocked. “He’d draw a dick. On your _face_.”

Which is, like. Undoubtedly true. Somewhere from the front of the van, Louis cackles and Harry shrieks. Niall snores on.

In the backseat, Zayn makes a show of sighing.

“Fine, Leeyum.” he says, tugging at Liam’s hair just to watch him flinch. “I'm yours to draw on forever, then.”

And after that, he sort of is.

|

 

Of course, Zayn spends so much time doodling on the rest of them, and planning the more permanent doodles he wants for himself, that he forgets for a while. Forgets what the heart and its _ventricles_ and roots and heartleaves had looked like exactly, the black ink smearing out until it almost looked blue; what he doesn’t forget it how it made him feel. Turns out maybe the reassurance he’d given Liam was more sage than he’d realized.

Liam’s brighter, these days, bounces higher off of his feet on stage, has learned how to be intimate with his boys both alone and in front of a crowd. It amazes Zayn a bit, sometimes, the way he turns around and it feels like Liam has gone all Transformers on him, a newly unfolded Liambot in place of the old one, a brand new model with even nicer arms who leans his head into Zayn’s neck, slides warm fingertips under the hem of Zayn’s shirt, has a bloodhound nose for physical affection.

He still doesn’t like going out and drinking much, that hasn’t changed. He doesn’t like the crowds and the responsibility of it all, but Zayn’s taken to staying behind with him in the hotels, anyway. It’s an excuse to have some downtime, to recharge, to watch his favorite movies with Liam without Louis ragging that they’ve seen them a _million_ times before, this is boring and can’t they do something _fun_ for once.

(“Like what, try and pull a prank on Paul that he sees coming a mile away for the hundredth time?” Liam asks and then immediately looks surprised at his own daring. Zayn startles out a laugh and high fives him while Louis scowls.)

Tonight they’re somewhere in America, which is still a novelty unto itself. London feels very far away; he thinks about skyping home but the room is dim and his eyes are threatening mutiny, trying to creep closed against the glare of the television.

“What’re you thinking about?” Liam asks, grabbing Zayn’s attention with a drag of his nails up Zayn’s thigh.

“Home,” Zayn says. “Thinking about mum’s cooking and doing puzzles with Waliyha when it rains. I miss the rain, even miss when it’s pissing down and you can’t do anything without getting properly soggy.”

“Yeah,” Liam says. He’s quiet for long enough that Zayn feels himself slipping, lets go.

When he wakes, he half expects it to be to a drunken doggypile of boys, climbing all over him with boozy kisses and professions of love and complaints about how much they’ve missed him. He’s still in bed, though, and it’s quiet. The telly is off, the lights low, his neck hurts.

He blinks blearily, rolls his head a bit. Liam’s fallen asleep beside him, head on Zayn’s thigh, his arm curled around and tucked warmly up under Zayn’s leg like a pillow. The goofy grin that overtakes his face at the sight would be embarrassing, if Zayn cared at all. He contemplates reaching for his phone to document the moment but as he makes for it, he catches sight of where his sweatpants have been pushes partway up his calf, the smear of something dark and unfamiliar peeking out below them.

By bending his leg and craning his sore neck a bit, Zayn can just make it out, whatever it is that Liam has scrawled across his skin. It centers around the jut of his anklebone, the blob of a body with its many legs tendrilling down and curling under the arch of his foot. It’s an octopus, a squid maybe, undulating and gleaming, almost alive.

“How’s it make you feel?” Liam’s eyes are still closed. Zayn can feel his jaw move against his thigh as he talks.

“Makes me feel...oozy,” Zayn says, “and kinda cool. Maybe if I were more like this badass octopi mate here I could go exploring in an underwater caves or whatever it is they do.”

“You’d want to do that?”

“Maybe. I’m full of surprises, Payno.”

“You’d need a life jacket for that, though, wouldn’t you? Proper safety attire and whatnot.”

“Not if you came with me, you’d keep me safe.” Liam’s fingertips press hard into the back of Zayn’s thigh where they’re still resting.

“I would. I definitely would.”

“I bet octopi would give good hugs.”

“Better than Niall’s?”

“Well. Don’t tell him I said it.”

Zayn grins. Niall’s hugs are pretty spectacular, but he likes the little octopus suctioned to his foot. It’s nice. “I think I like your hugs best, anyway.”

Liam smiles, turns his head to plant a tiny kiss against the warm material on Zayn’s thigh. “Now you have one whenever you want, at least until it washes off. A Liam octopus to hug you and protect you and all that.” He pauses. “This is getting mushy and embarrassing, I’m sorry.”

Zayn can hear loud, drunk voices in the hall, getting nearer, his and Liam’s names being shouted and giggled, but Liam is warm and constant and very, very sober in contrast to the boys who are about to storm through the door. And Zayn loves him for it, loves him for being staunchly himself even as he’s becoming someone else. It’s reassuring, it’s comforting, and it’s leaving him a bit awed, watching his best friend grow up and grow into himself. That’s the kind of anchor Zayn craves, no matter what city they’re in or what part of the world.

They’re solid, Liam and Zayn are. Still.

“Don’t be sorry,” Zayn says closing his eyes and threading his fingers through Liam’s hair, just for a moment. “Don’t be a bit.”

 

|

 

Liam’s not the only one who grows.

Zayn gets older too, learns how to ad-lib his way through a misremembered lyric, how to sleep in ten minute bursts, how to make his smiley faces on Twitter extra passive aggressive. They write and record their second album, and he learns how to get through turbulence without puking, how to season fast food so it tastes as close to his mum’s cooking as possible, how to score weed in a country where he can’t even say hello.

Most of all, though, he learns how exhausting it is to be famous, not just up-and-coming famous but like, _properly_ famous. The kind where people care about things they shouldn’t, where they say things they’ve got no place to say.

Sometimes, Zayn loves it. Loves the whirlwind, loves the lights, loves being with his brothers on a bus, rolling across new roads and singing new songs.

But sometimes he thinks about that octopus, the one he named Merle, twisting along his heel. When Zayn thinks of Merle, he thinks of being a rebel monster of the deep sea, swallowing down pirate vessels as they chase him, and crashing through the nets they would use to bind him.

“No harpoon on Earth could get me,” he tells Liam’s legs. They’re dangling out the bunk above him, socked foot twitching in response to Zayn’s declaration. A moment later, they swing out of the way, replaced by Liam’s upside down face and torso.

“What’s a harpoon?” he asks, blood rushing to his head and flooding his face with color.

Zayn moves his hand lazily, too warm and cozy in his nest of blankets and pillows. “Those things a sailor would use to kill a fish. S’ like a spear.” He mimes shooting a long stick.

Liam grins lopsidedly. “You thinking about Merle, then?” he asks. “Itching for an underwater adventure?.”

Zayn hums. “Yeah,” he says. “Maybe.” It’s not the first time he’s poked at Liam, handed him a marker, asked him to give Merle friends--a starfish called Hank, a stingray called Ned. On his shoulder, a skull and crossbones--a dead Dread Pirate called Earl--is fading but has fast become one of Zayn’s favorites.

There’s a quiet intensity with which Liam builds this undersea world on Zayn’s body, making something that’s all their own. He leaves little pieces of himself--promises, reminders--scattered across Zayn’s limbs and it grounds Zayn when he feels like he’s about to float away on a tide of his own thoughts. Opens up windows inside him, lets light into rooms that can get dark, shuttered.

 _You’re on this mad, wonderful journey,_ the pictures say. _And I’m right there with you._

Zayn smiles, kicks at the ladder, pats at the duvet. “Come draw?” he asks, and Liam’s answering smile is soft, fond.

“Of course,” he answers. He disappears for a second, then moves down the ladder of the bunk. A moment later, he’s sprawled next to Zayn, elbows and knees digging into Zayn’s side.

“Have you gotten bigger?” Zayn demands, shoving a little at Liam’s warm bulk. “Your arms are massive, man.” With his hair shorter, quiffed and gelled, Liam’s neck looks thicker, too. Zayn’s reminded that Liam’s got his own methods to cope with anxiety: pull-ups on the threshold, crunches in between bouts of FIFA, long jogs around an arena. While Zayn has shrunk, skinny legs and wire-hanger shoulders, Liam has filled out.

“Nah,” Liam says modestly, pushing back. “‘s this shirt. Makes me look like Action Man.” He reaches over Zayn’s head, rummages through the small shelf. Finding a marker, he uncaps the lid and asks: “What’ll it be today?”

At the question, all the tension usually strung so tight through Zayn’s body seems to seep out. He sinks into the hushed tenderness of Liam’s voice, the steady thump of his heartbeat. An inhale, and he catches the comforting scent of skin and sweat and cologne, the acrid bite of ink.

“Whatever you want,” Zayn says after a pause, voice rough, and gives Liam his arm.

Over the next twenty minutes, in long sweeps and short strokes, Liam draws. With Zayn’s arm draped across Liam’s chest, the distant soundtrack of a movie playing in the bus lounge, the whirr of the wheels under them, Zayn’s eyelids grow heavy. It seems like Liam’s best work is always when Zayn’s on the brink of sleep, limbs loose and breathing even.

“I’ve drawn you as a soldier,” Liam says, and the cadence of his speech is so familiar that it sounds like a lullaby. “An Action Man like me. No one messes with Action Man, yeah? No paps. No weirdos on Twitter. Early call times quiver in the face of Action Man’s very big gun.”

Zayn huffs out a laugh. “A soldier, huh?” he asks, drowsy. “A tough man. Better bodyguard than Jerry.”

Liam blows a raspberry against the tufty crown of Zayn’s head. “Duh,” he says. “But don’t let him hear it. Would hurt his feelings.” They’re quiet for a moment, companionable silence punctuated by a shout from the lounge that’s most likely Louis screaming at Niall for being a dirty cheat at Mario Kart again.

“You are, you know,” Liam ventures finally. His voice is low, intimate. “Tough, I mean. Tougher than you think. Tougher than most anyone knows.”

If his first drawing was a way for Liam to mark his place in Zayn’s life, and every subsequent drawing has been a way to chart the evolution of Liam’s love and loyalty, then this drawing is the first that shows Zayn who _he_ is to _Liam_. Someone strong. Someone worth believing in.

“Liam,” Zayn says. He leans his head against Liam’s, then ducks close, kisses the high cut of his cheekbone, a dry press of his mouth against heated skin. Then again, just his name. “Liam.”

“I mean it,” Liam says. His finger traces along the vein that underlies the drawing now on Zayn’s arm, and a feeling like electricity zings through Zayn’s chest.

“Thanks,” Zayn says. “You...I needed to hear that, man. Like. More than I’d realized.”

And there’s the truth, cut clean to the bone: when everything around him conspires to drive him further and further away from who he was or wants to be, Liam is the one who helps Zayn come back to himself.

They sit like that, quietly, for awhile. Eventually, Zayn closes his eyes. Breathes in.

Lets himself just be.

 

|

 

Zayn’s annoyed.

Well. Annoyed isn’t fair, but Liam isn’t fair either, anymore. He’s got these arms and this torso and his dumb handsome scruff and this cut jawline and -

And Zayn has other things to focus on, that’s all. Things that don’t involve Liam, things like his own hair, which keeps going lopsided in the Australian heat, and things like how long it’s been since he last snuck away to have a cig.

He’s definitely not concerning himself with Liam, not until he literally trips over him in one of the back halls of the venue. It’s a ways from everyone else, a ways from the rooms where everyone is hanging out and getting ready, and it’s a bit cooler back here, which is exactly why Zayn had been headed out this way. He hadn’t expected company, especially not company in the form of his best friend curled up on the floor, legs drawn into his chest and his head on his knees.

“Liam?” Zayn says, all of his earlier annoyance forgotten in the face of his sudden and overwhelming worry. “Liam, you okay?”

Liam doesn’t pick up his head, but nods minutely.

“Do you want to talk?” There’s a pause, and then an equally small head shake.

“Can I sit here with you?”

_Shrug._

Zayn slides down the wall, the leather of his jacket making squeaky noises against the paint. He tips his head back, takes a swig from the water bottle he’s still holding in one hand. It’s sweating against his palm, slippery. He thinks about offering some to Liam, decides against it.

The silence rests between them for a bit. It’s not uncomfortable, although it is weighing on Zayn, and clearly on Liam, too. Zayn sits, and swigs, and thinks.

After a bit, Liam turns his head on his knees until he’s looking at Zayn. Zayn keeps staring at the wall across from them, traces a thumb over the knob of his opposing wrist bone.

There’s a Sharpie sticking out of Liam’s pocket from when he’d gone out to talk to the fans and sign things for them earlier, pressed up against the fence at the venue parking lot hoping to catch a glimpse of them. Zayn hadn’t bothered, couldn’t summon the kind of energy inside of him that would've been required. Liam is so very much better than he is, anyway.

He slides the marker out, takes off the cap thoughtfully. He’s not really sure what he intends to do with it, but then Liam unfolds one of his arms from around his knees, offers it up to Zayn.

“Yeah?”

“Surprise me.”

“You wanna tell me what’s got you so sad while I draw?”

Zayn sketches and Liam talks. It’s nothing terrible, really. He’s just overwhelmed, like the end of tours tend to do to him. Zayn understands, knows how welcome and terrifying in equal measure the prospect of going home can be. Wondering if the people they’ve left behind will still be waiting, wondering too if their relationships with each other will change while they’re away.

Liam loves Australia, is the thing.

“I went to a real estate office, this morning,” he says, and Zayn tries not to look too surprised.

“Well, you can certainly afford it, yeah? Perks of the job?”

Liam laughs, a quiet sound. “Yeah, no question. Rolling in it, we are.” He’s quiet for a bit, closes his eyes against the feel of the marker bleeding ink into his forearm.

“I found a place I really loved, too. Private neighborhood, close to the beach, really open and light on the inside.”

“Are you going to get it?” Zayn holds his breath, not sure what he wants or imagines the answer might be.

“Nah. I just - having a place like that, it’s where I’d want to be all the time, breaks or otherwise, you know? Somewhere just for me, away from the stress even of going home and trying to make up for being _gone_ all the bloody time to my mum.”

Zayn’s heart beats a little harder. He knows what Liam means, aches with sympathy.

“Had a nice guest room on the second floor, these huge windows looking out to the beach.” Liam’s voice is low, quiet. “Would’ve been your room, I imagine.”

Zayn tries to draw in a breath, caps the pen and surveys his handywork.

“Zayn,” Liam says. Zayn stares down at Liam's arm, tries not to feel as suddenly apprehensive as he does.

“Zayn.” He looks up, finally, and Liam is right there. His eyes are sad, but there’s something in them that hooks Zayn right behind the sternum, draws him in.

“Would I really need my own room, then?” Zayn asks.

Liam kisses him and it’s the most revelatory, unsurprising moment Zayn has ever experienced. It’s a kiss for Australia, a kiss for a tour finished and for a best friend and for the guest room in Liam’s dream house. Zayn’s hands are still caught on Liam’s forearm, Liam’s mouth sweet and searing and needy. He makes a tiny noise, caught somewhere in the back of his throat, and Zayn pulls away. He reaches up to tug Liam’s head down and kiss him once more, square between the eyes.

“Look,” Zayn says, bringing Liam’s attention down to the ink scrawled across his skin. Liam stares down, takes in what’s been drawn there while he talked.

“Zayn,” Liam says. “I’m going to kiss you again.”

 

|

 

There’s an entire _galaxy_ unfolding itself up the tender skin on the inside of Liam’s arm.

It’s not familiar, none of the constellations he remembers from summer nights on the porch with Ruth, but he knows it all the same. There are stars, a cratered moon, swirls of a cosmos he’s never seen. In the center of this world, expansive and contained all at once, there are planets orbiting each other, their gravity pulling them in and around in equal, pulsating measure; five of them all together in the midst of this far flung universe.

He understands it best when they’re on stage that night. There’s a flow to them, a rhythm in their movement around the stage, push and pull and a thread of connection running through it all, through them all. They’re living in that galaxy, Liam and Zayn and all of their boys.

Zayn glows under the hot lights of the stage, turns to catch Liam’s eye. Liam holds up his arm, flashing the drawing like a salute and Zayn grins, instantaneous and blinding.

Zayn’s an integral part of their own little planetary system, Liam knows, just as they all are. None of the five of them could have this without each of the others’ specific pull and balance. Zayn, though; Zayn’s the sun in this galaxy he’s given Liam, too.

Liam’s certain of that.


End file.
